The Last Indian War: Reassessing the Legacy of American Indian Boarding Schools and the Emergence of Pan-Indian Identity
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Global Tides Volume 10 Article 2 2016 The Last Indian War: Reassessing the Legacy of American Indian Boarding Schools and the Emergence of Pan-Indian Identity Abigail M. Gibson Pepperdine University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu/globaltides Part of the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Gibson, Abigail M. (2016) "The Last Indian War: Reassessing the Legacy of American Indian Boarding Schools and the Emergence of Pan-Indian Identity," Global Tides: Vol. 10 , Article 2. Available at: https://digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu/globaltides/vol10/iss1/2 This Humanities is brought to you for free and open access by the Seaver College at Pepperdine Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Global Tides by an authorized editor of Pepperdine Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]. Gibson: The Last Indian War: Reassessing the Legacy of American Indian Boarding Schools and the Emergence of Pan-Indian Identity On the poor plains of the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, a poignant cry was uttered in the form of a poem in 1973: “my blood rages in these Lakota hills as the Wind screams out purify purify be strong be one search no longer stand STAND free me free you free the people.”1 In these thirteen lines lies the story and language of Pan-Indian resistance in the latter half of the twentieth century. Written by Karoniaktatie, a participant of the Occupation of Wounded Knee in 1973, in which members of the Oglala Lakota nation and the recently formed American Indian Movement (AIM) occupied the historic site for seventy-one days, this poem stands as a testament to the power of American Indian identity.2 Tribal differentiation became blurred in the face of overwhelming sorrow, shared experience, and a collective commitment to a widespread awareness of the largely unrecognized story of the indigenous peoples. The massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890, the symbol of the occupation, exists deeply rooted in the American Indian consciousness and memory as the embodiment of indiscriminate federal violence against the nation’s first inhabitants. One hundred years after the last shot left three hundred Lakota men, women, and children dead and buried in mass graves on the Pine Ridge Reservation, the Big Foot Memorial Ride to Wounded Knee was staged as a demonstration of a continued memory the seminal event that has come to define, for many, white-Indian relations.3 Wounded Knee is a striking representation of intertribal solidarity and collective experience both in 1890 and 1973, but the 1 Karoniaktatie, “Hostages” (1973), in Voices From Wounded Knee, 1973 In the Words of the Participants, ed. Akwesasne Notes, Mohawk Nation (Rooseveltown: Akwesasne Notes, 1974), 39. 2 Philip D. Roos et. al, “The Impact of the American Indian Movement On the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation,” Phylon 41, no. 1 (First Quarter 1980): 89-90, http://www.jstor.org/stable/274670. 3 Mario Gonzalez; Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, The Politics of Hallowed Ground: Wounded Knee and the Struggle For Indian Sovereignty (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 81-120. Published by Pepperdine Digital Commons, 2016 1 Global Tides, Vol. 10 [2016], Art. 2 ironic story of the emergence of Pan-Indian identity begins in a less belligerent way in the form of federally maintained boarding schools. American Indian boarding schools have been consistently cited, appropriately, as the primary form of federal efforts to extinguish American Indian culture as a solution to the “Indian problem.” It is my contention, however, that boarding schools played a more nuanced role and that they served as a catalyst in the emerging American Indian identity that was developed during the twentieth century. Before discussing the connection between boarding schools and the emergence of Pan-Indianism, it is necessary to establish a context in which this phenomenon has been studied in the past. Scholars have ascribed a myriad of origins to the rise of a larger American Indian identity that transcends regional and tribal boundaries. All of these have their merits, but I will make the case that the boarding schools system played a crucial factor in this development as well. I will argue that the boarding schools are a necessary and significant chapter in this “Red Dream.” The 1970s witnessed a burst of scholarship regarding American Indian identity and history as a result of an outbreak of Pan-Indian identity that was happening simultaneously. Hazel W. Hertzberg describes the early instances and roots of Pan-Indianism, primarily in reference to European colonial and American relations with tribes in the nineteenth century, in her comprehensive study, The Search For an American Indian Identity: Modern Pan-Indian Movements (1971). Hertzberg chronicles the roots of Pan-Indianism, beginning with first European contact in the sixteenth century and ending in the period of her own time. She explains that the tribes’ interactions with the United States, were based in n Americana policy of understanding American Indians as lumped together as part of the “Indian problem” rather than as separate and distinct sovereign nations. This viewpoint is invaluable in identifying the significance of the development of a Pan-Indian identity because it addresses the generalized ways in which American Indian peoples were viewed by the American policymakers that were to so deeply affect their lives. She argues, “of all these factors, perhaps the most important single element in stimulating Pan-Indianism was expanding education opportunity for Indians.”4 Hertzberg sees the school system as ultimately a positive step towards the creation of Pan-Indian identity, but focuses more on education in the twentieth century rather than the effectiveness of the schools themselves. Recent scholarship, however, tends to emphasize more contemporary explanations for the emergence of Pan-Indianism, and is characterized by a pervasive view of the boarding schools as nothing more than a more humane 4 Hazel W. Hertzberg, The Search For an American Indian Identity: Modern Pan-Indian Movements (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1971), 14. https://digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu/globaltides/vol10/iss1/2 2 Gibson: The Last Indian War: Reassessing the Legacy of American Indian Boarding Schools and the Emergence of Pan-Indian Identity version of cultural genocide. Donald L. Fixico makes the argument for the significant role of increasing urbanization of American Indian individuals following World War II in The Urban Indian Experience in America (2000). He focuses specifically on the Relocation Program, the sequel to the much more violent Indian Removal Act of 1830, and the economic issues faced by American Indians in the 1940s and 1950s that drove many into urban centers. Fixico emphasizes the shock Indians encountered transitioning from “communalism to a foreign individualism.”5 This sudden blurring of identity for American Indians shifting into mainstream urban American life had several effects on the idea of Pan-Indianism and the way in which people from varying tribes interacted with each other. Fixico highlights the growing divide between urban and reservation American Indians as a barrier to a transcendent identity, but eventually characterizes the solidarity movements for each respective group in much the same way-primarily the formation of social enclaves along lines other than tribes. It is in this way that Fixico touches briefly upon the boarding school as a contributor to the fostering of Pan-Indianism, but he sees it as only a secondary factor. Thus, Fixico maintains, “urbanization fostered Pan-Indianism as a new ‘Indianess’ to which American Indians could belong and find security within a group membership.”6 Fixico makes a compelling case for urbanization as a directly related cause of Pan-Indianism, but does not emphasize the earlier efforts of federal American Indian education. Sherry L. Smith in her study, Hippies, Indians, and the Fight For Red Power (2012), claims the various Civil Rights Movements of the 1960s and 1970s were the most significant causes in fostering Pan-Indianism and the Red Power Movement. Like Fixico, Smith focuses on recent contributions to Pan-Indianism, referring to counterculturalists, African- and Mexican-American civil rights activists, and anti-war protesters as the first explicit allies to the furthering of a Pan-Indian movement. She asserts that it “was, rather the cumulative effect of Native American articulation of needs and demands over the decades matched with non-Indians’ realization of their legitimacy during the 1960s and 1970s that finally led to substantive, meaningful reform in Indian affairs” and the development of a cohesive identity that transcended individual tribal identities.7 However, similar to Fixico, Smith focuses on recent developments in Pan- 5 Donald L. Fixico, The Urban Indian Experience In America (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2000), 3. 6 Ibid, 142. 7 Sherry L. Smith, Hippies, Indians, and the Fight For Red Power (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2012), 16. Published by Pepperdine Digital Commons, 2016 3 Global Tides, Vol. 10 [2016], Art. 2 Indianism and does not address earlier instances in which it existed and developed. Finally, the boarding schools themselves have been characterized in almost exclusively the same way-as despicable federal efforts to destroy beautiful